To Montserrat We Go

Monday morning, Enn and I went to pick up a few bits and pieces in the way of provisioning while WW cleared us out of Antigua and Dana remained aboard, nursing her nasty cold and vicious sore throat. By about 10:30, we’d raise anchor and were on our way west. The seas were as gentle as I’ve ever seen them, the wind was perfect and we made 6 or 7 knots all the way to Montserrat. About 4:30 that afternoon, we anchored and WW cleared us in. We had rum punches then an Indian dish of shrimp with bell peppers served with Indian-spiced tomato rice.

Your humble correspondent with Dana and WW 

arriving on the Caribbean's Emerald Isle.

On Tuesday morning, we went ashore to try to find a taxi and had the enormous good fortune to meet Moose, also known as Positive. Positive was born and raised on Montserrat and lived in a southern suburb, Kinsale, of the capital Plymouth.

Dana, your humble correspondent and WW with uber-guide Positive.

In 1995, the Montserrat volcano made its presence known by spewing inches of reasonably toxic ash. The ash was carried by the prevailing winds over Plymouth which became unliveable. The south part of the island was eventually evacuated, but the exclusion zone was very porous. Conditions in the shelters in the north were unbearable and people would drift back home to “do some cooking”. Some farmers returned to work their fields and provided much-needed produce for those living in shelters. In the summer of 1997, the volcano became deadly, sending three flows down its sides, annihilating villages and farmland, and killing 19 people. Thereafter, the exclusion zone became truly exclusive—patrolled and enforced. (Much knowledge and understanding of this terrible time was accrued from reading Fire from the Mountain by Polly Pattullo, Papillotte Press, 2000.)

Positive was evacuated from Kinsale, where he ran a small waterfront guest house. He moved to Cork Hill to start a grocery store. A few days before his grand opening, Cork Hill was evacuated. So he moved up north where he had a bar at Little Bay, Montserrat’s only remaining harbour. That was demolished to make way for new and more extensive development, but Positive has been included in that development and his bar New Beginnings should open any day now. He is also, happily for those who have to good fortune to be seeking one, a taxi driver.

The island population is about 4,800, so it is not surprising that everywhere we went, our driver was greeted by shouts of “Positive!” or “Moose!” Asked if everyone knows everyone else, Positive said, “I would think so.” He begins and ends every phone call, every conversation with “Positive”.

After getting a permit from the Salem police department, Positive drove us into the exclusion zone (maybe even a smidge farther than the permit allowed). We walked through the ruins of the old Emerald Isle Hotel, later renamed the Montserrat Springs Hotel for a hot springs down by the beach—now gone, filled with volcanic muck. From the ruins of the swimming pool terrace, we had a spectacular view of the ruins of Plymouth, ghost town extraordinaire.

The exclusion zone closes at 4 p.m. This sign marks its extreme limit,

beyond which only official persons may penetrate.

Dana amid the accumulated ash and muck

in the erstwhile chic Montserrat Springs Hotel.

The usual suspects, with Positive, take in the view from the hotel

over the ruins of Plymouth, former capital of Montserrat.

Positive took us to the erstwhile golf course, now buried under feet of volcanic mud, ash and pumice. We went to the Montserrat Volcano Observatory which looks down over George Martin’s Air Studio as was, and has a long view to the simmering volcano. On our way back north, he stopped at Runaway Ghaut (pronounced gut) where we drank the crystal waters that ensure we will return to the island. Then it was over the hills to view the new housing estates and the new airport.

 Dana and Enn have had a drink...so they'll be back...

 

 ...and so will your humble correspondent (notice the

faucet at the bottom left for those more fastidious).

Positive took us to the erstwhile golf course, now buried under feet of volcanic mud, ash and pumice. We went to the Montserrat Volcano Observatory which looks down over George Martin’s Air Studio as was, and has a long view to the simmering volcano. On our way back north, he stopped at Runaway Ghaut (pronounced gut) where we drank the crystal waters that ensure we will return to the island. Then it was over the hills to view the new housing estates and the new airport.

By the time we returned to Little Bay, we had been given a magnificent five-hour tour and were ready for a small collapse. As we raised the dinghy in preparation for next morning’s departure, the people off a newly arrived sailboat headed in to shore. They asked us is a tour was worthwhile. It was with great pleasure we sent them off to where we knew Positive was waiting.

(I have written about Montserrat before, so if you’re interested in reading and seeing a bit more, you could look back through my posts to find those. Also, I have lots of pictures, kindness of Enn, but we are currently in the Internet equivalent of the Middle Ages due to an appalling event at Nelson's Dockyard during which agents visit large boats available for charter. These hideous behemoths suck the bandwidth dry and will continue to do so all week. Just getting this blog posted, let alone with photos, requires a trip ashore to be close to the source of Internetness. Photos will be added later.)

(Update: photos have been added. Thank you, Enn!!)

Around Antigua

I awoke on Thursday with the keen realization that we needed to do proper provisioning. We were missing important things like cereal for Enn, milk, food for dinner, cheese and jam. It’s a long dinghy ride from the bay in to Jolly Harbour, so I suggested we go in and pick up one of the moorings inside the harbour. The bridle is not required at a mooring, so the splice could be repaired, and we’d be much closer to go in for groceries. This plan was agreed upon.

Half the Eager Crew (Enn) came to assist with raising the anchor. This happens when a button is pushed, the windlass goes “whirr” and the anchor chain is gathered to the chain locker. Alas, I pushed the button and there was a failure to whirr. Enn and I had to haul the chain and the anchor out by hand. Something else to fix…

We got into the harbour, picked up a mooring, did a shop, then WW respliced the bridle and poked about in the guts of the windlass’s little electrical box. The windlass worked!

We had thought, given our single-engine state, to potter up and down the coast for a few days, but discovered there aren’t many places to potter and even fewer to anchor. We did a little shakedown sail into Five Islands Bay, supposed to have one of the better anchorages, and we weren’t impressed. Thus it was we found ourselves heading down the west coast, hanging an east at the bottom and pulling into English Harbour that afternoon.

We dropped anchor but WW decided the position wasn’t ideal, so we had to raise the anchor again. Oh woe was us, the windlass didn’t work. In the bay outside Jolly we had been in 6 feet of water, here we were in 20, with lots of chain out. Well, I used the age-old technique of refusing to believe I had to lift the chain and anchor by hand, and just mashed the control button maniacally. And lo, there was a great whirring and the windlass worked. It lived long enough to get the anchor up (if it hadn’t, I would have killed it myself). We re-anchored with some trepidation (Would we have to haul the anchor again, by hand??) but WW was pleased with where we lay and how we held. He then fixed another rotting connection in the windlass’s control box and it has lived happily ever after (so far) in a functional way.

We spent the next three days in English Harbour. On Friday evening, we had a lovely dinner at Trappas to celebrate WW’s 65^th birthday, then went on to Lime to hear Idus, Bob Marley’s band. Much dancing and fun was had by all.

Unfortunately, the Eager Crew had arrived with nasty colds which, despite their best efforts, they failed to inflict on us. I thought I had it on Sunday, but snoozed the day away and bored it out of my system. Nonetheless, they felt pretty crummy, particularly Dana, so aside from a few short hikes, not a great deal more than lolling and mending went on over the weekend.

The engine business meant we couldn’t do what we really wanted to do which was take Dana to Montserrat. Dana, being Irish, has long been fascinated by Montserrat which was settled (after the Carib Indians left) by Irish immigrants and indentured labourers from St. Kitts. It still has place names like Galway’s, Kinsale and Cork Hill. Well, on Sunday, WW looked at the weather forecast and saw that it was good. In fact, he saw that it was great. Almost nothing in the way of seas, winds just in Django’s sweet spot at about 15 knots, and these conditions holding through Wednesday. He decided, single-engined though we might be, to Montserrat we would go. We would leave on Monday, tour on Tuesday, return on Wednesday and bid a fond farewell to the EC on Thursday. And thus it came to pass.

Floating with Friends

It is now December 7 and, at last, I have time to catch up since last I posted. The weather is horrendous, the rain is pelting down, the wind is howling. It is a splendid time for huddling in the cabin and writing about warmer days…

We went into the water at about midday on Wednesday, November 27. The travel lift came at about 10:30 and Django was raised from her supports. 

Django on her way to flotation.

The head of our bottom-painting team Bob Marley (so named because he is lead singer in a reggae band) did the last bits of naked bottom.  Soon after, we were floating! It was every bit as marvelous as I had hoped.

Bob Marley doing touch-up.

We tied up at the fuel dock and filled our water tanks with water and our ice chest with ice. Next, the Great Cleaning took place. Poor old Django was indescribably filthy, but a little elbow grease and Boat Wash saw that dealt with. The guest berth was dressed in its finest and Febreeze was employed to battle a pervasive aroma of engine innards. An initial provisioning run took place. WW brought Stefan over from the dinghy dock and was so shattered by her lightness and general not-Boffoness that he thought he’d been delivered the wrong dinghy.  We both missed Boffo—her sturdy reliability, her playful character, her streak of independence. Mind you, we didn’t miss her deflatable ways.

Our guests, the Eager Crew (Dana Hearne and Enn Raudsepp) arrived at Jolly Harbour at about 5 p.m. We welcomed them with open arms, put their gear in their berth and plied them with rum. Standard procedure, really.

Then it was cast off and out to the bay where we dropped anchor. This was accompanied by the discovery that WW, in reconstituting the headstay, had got the bridle half over and half under the forward lifelines. We need the bridle, all on one side of the lifelines, to anchor. So he had to undo the splice, untangle the bridle, make a temporary fix by just tying it around the crossbeam, and carry on from there. Yet another thing to be fixed…

That evening, we dined on pollo con piña a la antigua (old-fashioned chicken with pineapple would be my rough translation) with a vegetable-enriched couscous. A bit of song singing and wine imbibing helped mark our return to the water and the arrival of our guests.

Boat Maintenance Can Be Fun

Progress is being made.

Two days ago, WW and I arrived at Django bright and early. The repainting of her bottom was almost complete, just the boot-top (a line just above the waterline) to go and the places where she is on supports.

Less joy from the engine, which has to be pulled. At first it was going to be just the head, but now they are saying the whole thing should come out. To do that, they must first build a scaffold to support the transmission. All very complicated and time-consuming. We’ll have just one engine for some time.

WW and I spent most of Monday (two days ago) applying masking tape to Django’s cockpit, cabin top, and deck. She has painted lozenges everywhere and they needed to be repainted. Between them are strips of fibreglass that needed to be protected. This is all well and good, but there are a lot of these lozenges and, horror of horrors, their corners are rounded. Masking is fun until you hit a corner, at which point it gets mighty tedious. 

Tape artistry by Django's captain and mate 

After we’d got most of the foredeck and the cabin top ready, WW started painting while I (having got a bit of sunburn) carried on taping in the shelter of the cockpit.

Filling in the blanks

As a break from our labours, friend Peter with son Peter (Peter the Elder and Peter the Younger) arrived to claim Boffo. She was lowered with due ceremony (which is to say: not much) onto the bed of their truck, and off she went.

We walked over to the supermarket Epicurean to grab a piece of fried chicken (WW had jerk) and some melon for lunch. Then it was back to painting and taping. I can’t tell you how much we enjoyed Monday.

Yesterday (Tuesday), I finished taping and started to plan a menu for the season’s first Week of Having Guests. WW finished the painting. This involved our having to flee the boat as he gradually painted us off it. Then we went off for lunch. We had to borrow a ladder and climb over the bow to get back on board. We removed the tape from the earliest of Monday’s painting, then WW went to help the guys on the ground painting the boot top.

The boatyard boss showed up and, when WW said we wanted to launch today (Wednesday) he said, “No. All book.” Uhoh, we have guests arriving today and living in a boat on the hard is No Fun. WW told the man that that was a big problem. He came back late in the afternoon to tell us we launch at 10:30 a.m.  Phew.

Just before 5, we headed over to meet our new dinghy. She is smaller and lighter and is named Stefan (for Django’s bandmate, violin player Stefan Grappelli).

Back home for a rum punch then dinner at Mad Mongoose.

We’ll leave shortly, get the rest of the tape up (by far the best part of the whole job), take in a very smelly load of work clothes for laundering, return the rental car, do the groceries, clean the boat…oh the list goes on. But the highlight will definitely be floating. I am very much looking forward to floating.

Slow but Steady Progress

Django is still on the hard. We have rented a tiny efficiency apartment up behind the yacht club in Falmouth from our friend Bill Dunn. He’s given us a very nice deal on it. We will be here until Wednesday when Django is due to go back in the water. We’ve rented a car to shuttle between here and Jolly, and will be returning that at midday on Wednesday. Our guests arrive on Wednesday. Wednesday is looming.

It has been a very rough start to our season. Our dinghy Boffo is being replaced, but we knew that would be happening when we left for the summer. The new dinghy arrives tomorrow morning bright and early, and Boffo goes off to live with our friend Peter. The port engine has been undergoing extensive work, but the verdict was passed on Saturday: the head needs to come off. They will pull it today (Monday) or tomorrow and it will take a few days to repair. The bottom has been ground, sanded, primed and painted. Second coat goes on today. 

While all that was going on, one of the painters discovered that the central part of our crossbeam (runs between the bows) was corroded to honeycomb. The beam is rather important. It supports the head stay which, in turn, supports the mast. The fantastic news is that it was discovered on the hard, not by having the mast go over in a blow. WW had to disconnect the head stay, have the bad bit replaced, reconnect the head stay and tune the rigging. It’s easy to say in a quick, one-off sentence but, trust me, it was a lot of work.

I went over on Saturday after the end of dog- and cat-care responsibilities. Poor Django is a disgusting mess. Well, less so now as I have reamed out the galley and cleaned the soles in our berth, the galley, the pantry and the saloon. The port side will get its scrubbing when the engine has been pulled. In the meantime, I am polishing our fibreglass on deck. WW has endless tasks, great and small.

We both just want to be afloat. It’s been exhausting for WW, generally annoying for both of us, and expensive. Our friend Michael keeps wondering whether we wouldn’t like a racehorse as well. Ha bloody ha.

Ah well, this too shall pass.

Our plans for the week with our guests are necessarily fluid. We shall see and I shall report.

Moving Back Aboard Soon

We have just today and tomorrow to go in this housesitting job.  Moya (the housesittee, I suppose) returns from Barbados tomorrow evening.

Each morning, WW heads off to English Harbour to work on Django with a gang of scrappers, grinders, painters, mechanics, you-name-its. He returns sweaty, smelly and tired each evening at about 5:30.

I, on the other hand, am in charge of Poppy and Lucy, who are dogs, and Black Cat who is, not surprisingly, a black cat (sex a mystery). I also oversee important things like Gregory the Gardener (lovely Haitian lad who calls me “sistah”); Eulah the Cleaning Lady who is elderly, moves at extreme slowness, and (as Moya says) “doesn’t do corners”; Paul the Swimming Pool guy; and Matthew the Car Washing Guy.  I am learning the lingo. On buses, when you want to get off, you say “bus stop”, and the bus does. When a worker wishes to communicate with the house at which he/she is working, the word is “inside”. Variously, Paul, Eulah, Gregory and Matthew have appeared and called “inside”. Being university-educated, I got it after about the third try. Also, people here actually exchange names. I am not an another anonymous housesitter. I am Mrs. Kathleen. Or sistah.

Our friend Roger the Boat-Minder fed us dinner here a couple of nights ago. He makes truly magnificent curries. He made a blazing roghan jhost (sp??), something with potatoes and bok choy (don’t fuss, it was fabulous), a superb pulao rice, and a salad. He made enough for a small army. Fortunately, we managed to get our friends Les and Anthea to join us or we’d still have had  buckets when Dana and Enn join us next Tuesday.

I walk the dogs in the morning, before it gets hot, and again in the mid- to late-afternoon. Then I feed them. Lucy is a delightful little mutt, abused in her childhood so she has certain issues with the leash, if it gets tangled about her. Poppy is 12, is not keen on Lucy, likes to roll in smelly things (gross) and eat herbivore poop (gross). I walk them with particular attention to preventing Poppy’s predilections.

Poppy on one of her chaises longues...no Lucys need apply

Miss Meows-A-Lot

Instructions on feeding Black Cat were “when it meows”. That turned into a day-long job. No wonder he/she/it is circular. Ten days won’t make much difference, but we’re now on a once-in-the-morning and once-in-the-afternoon feeding schedule. I am convincing myself the beast has a waistline.

Other chores: laundry, swimming in the pool, being eaten by mosquitoes. At night we have lovely mosquito nets. I am planning to introduce them at Lake Anne and pray they may work on black flies as well.

We move back onto Django tomorrow, after picking Moya up at the airport. Then we have to survive a couple of days and nights on the hard (even more mosquitoes than here). We hope to be launched on Monday.

Return of the Blog

We left Montreal, after a lovely lunch with Dan, on the afternoon of Tuesday, Nov 5. At Dorval, we threw away our cigarettes and have been smoke-free (and grumpy) ever since.

We spent the night in Toronto, where Jordie met us for dinner at our airport hotel. In the morning, we caught our flight to Antigua and, thanks to a terrific tail wind, we arrived 50 minutes early. Our friend Arnold picked us up and brought us to the Dockyard. Django had been moved out of the mangroves and onto a mooring in Ordinance Bay by our trusty boat-watcher Roger. He was supposed to have brought Boffo the Dinghy in, but there was no sign of her, so Arnold took us out to Django in his dinghy. On the way, we saw Roger and he told us the outboard wasn’t working, also that Django’s port engine seemed to be seized. Ah, the joys of returning to a boat after six months.

While you’re sleeping, your boat is breaking.

Still, it was lovely to be back aboard, even if we had to paddle to and from shore. Roger lined up a chap to look at the outboard and, amazingly, he had it repaired in under two days. Obviously not a fellow clear on the “island time” concept. He even thinks he might, one day, be able to make it run on both cylinders. That would be achieving the outboard Nirvana.

I was actually quite ill for the first few days, possibly with food poisoning. Dunno, but very unpleasant and painful. However, by Friday I was all better and able to go to the tot and the fish dinner at the Copper and Lumber Stores.

WW had a mechanic out to look at the engine and it seems the problem is salt water that has siphoned into the fuel…not good. The mechanic thought the head would have to come off, but our friend Peter Carey said he’s had salt water in his fuel several times and gave WW tips on how to deal with it. So WW spent many hours embedded in the engine compartment, ankle deep in salty diesel. The upshot was a more cheerful sounding engine which, despite this, refused to start.

We had divers come to clean Django’s bottom where WW’s cheap Teflon-based paint, which he had high hopes of, proved categorically that you get what you pay for. The divers were not impressed as the chunked off large oysters and cement-like deposits and had to go get more tanks because the work took so long. WW paid them handsomely, so I think they were mollified.

Boffo is not long for this world, being not so much an inflatable and a deflatable. We have to pump her up almost daily. We patched her extensively last year, to no avail. So the sad decision has been made and she’ll be off to dinghy heaven when the new one arrives (ordered and due next week).

We need to have Django pulled, have her bottom pressure washed, possibly acid washed, primed and painted with anti-fouling paint. WW has some other bits and pieces he wants to get done while she’s on the hard. She’ll be pulled out at Jolly Harbour first thing on Monday morning. WW will sail her up on Sunday and spend the night there.

And where, you ask, am I while all this activity is occurring? Serendipitously, our friend Moya left on Wednesday for 10 days in Barbados for her daughter’s wedding. Her house-two-dogs-and-a-cat sitters had fallen through, so she asked if we’d do the job. This means that I am sitting on a shady porch by a lovely clear and cool swimming pool, typing this, cat to the right, dog to the fore and another dog at my feet.  We have use of her car as well, so WW can drive over to Jolly Harbour every day.

The work should be finished by next weekend, we’ll get her back in the water on Monday (enough time for the paint to dry properly), just in time for our first visitors who arrive Tuesday (you know who you are). Moya is back on Friday, so we may have to spend a couple of days in Django on the hard, but that’s not impossible. We hope the engine will be repaired by the time we launch, but that is far from assured. If we are a single-engine catamaran when our guests arrive, we’ll do something we’ve never done and sail around Antigua, exploring its many lovely bays and islets. I’ve been wanting to do that ever since we drove up to Crabb's Cove a couple of years ago and we saw the white sand beaches and turquoise waters.

Well, that's enough for now. Hugs to everyone1